Introducing the Great Marijuana Prohibitionists of 2012

In this fallen world, where foolishness regularly inoculates itself with itself in order to preserve itself, there are now two main arguments against legalizing the mild drug called marijuana while giving a pass to the far more dangerous drugs called alcohol and tobacco. And so, on the verge of an election in which pot is on the ballot in six states — Massachusetts, Montana, Colorado, Oregon, Arkansas (!), and Washington, where it might actually pass — we give you these arguments against, followed by a rebuttal from Norm Stamper, Seattle's former police chief and a passionate advocate of legalization.

Representing the old-school moral crusaders, we have Paul Chabot, a Republican lobbyist from California who led the successful fight against that state's legalization effort, Proposition 19.

"This is incremental degradation of community values," Chabot tells The Politics Blog. "They start with helping sick people and then it's ending marijuana 'prohibition,' as the other side likes to call it. The end stage is legalization of every drug under the sun and eventually prostitution."

Chabot does not believe that nearly 45,000 Americans are in prison for marijuana possession. "These are typically hard-core gangbangers who pled to a lesser charge to avoid a trial," he says. "Only 0.7 percent of people are actually in prison for marijuana possession. It's really a very, very finite small amount."

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(For the record, 0.7 percent of America's 2,266,800 state and federal prisoners is 15,867 people.)

Chabot also denies that people lose school loans or get kicked out of public housing or get arrested because of their race in disproportionate amounts. "It's a $100 citation in California," he says. "Kids smoking a joint at a party. Those aren't the people going to jail."

He raises alarms about the potency of modern marijuana. "When I was twelve, I went through rehab for marijuana and alcohol. The marijuana I was smoking was 1- to 3-percent THC — ditch weed, basically. In today's marijuana, the THC has risen from 16-percent to 33-percent potency."

And Chabot raises health concerns. "We have more children entering rehab for marijuana than any other drugs combined. And marijuana usage has been linked to testicular cancer, schizophrenia, depression, and a number of other physical and mental health problems."

Chabot admits that even food and water have "been linked" to many health problems and seems to accept that alcohol is a far more dangerous drug than marijuana — most experts say that alcohol causes 75,000 deaths a year while marijuana causes pretty much zero. But Chabot doesn't consider fairness issues valid. "Two wrongs don't make a right," he says.

Nor does Chabot believe that blood and urine tests are effective in testing for marijuana, despite their use by businesses and police departments all around the world. "The truth is you cannot test the percentage level for THC for driving behind the wheel," he says. "It's impossible. Blood or urine but it only shows on or off, there's no way to test the percentage."

After extensive consultations with police and medical professionals, the legalization proposal in Washington State has been set at a blood level of 0.05 active THC. But Chabot doesn't believe that the government has the right or ability to set any acceptable level for this particular drug. "Even if they could set a level, who is to determine that and how is that determined?"

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At the root of all Chabot's concerns is skepticism about the notion of freedom itself. "It's not a utopia system where we expect everyone to be responsible about their vices," he says. "I'm a dad. I've got three kids. It wasn't like this when I was growing up. We've already seen a problem with alcohol, tobacco. I don't think we should cross the line and try to legitimize marijuana."

For good measure, Chabot throws in the old "gateway drug" argument — "Ecstasy, cocaine, etc., a lot of these kids start off with smoking marijuana" — and brushes off the concern that prohibitionists like himself are actually creating a gateway for illegal behavior in general by putting kids in close association with criminals. He even denies that alcohol prohibition led to glory days for Al Capone and the mob.

My book, Our Eternal Battle Against Evil, looks at organized crime," says Chabot. "Organized crime existed long before Al Capone and long after. Al Capone was going to go into milk to make money. Wherever they can make money, they will."

Anyway, he says, prohibition "didn't outlaw all liquor, just the hard stuff."

That would come as a surprise to FDR, whose first act as president was to legalize beer.

"No, the illegal stuff was hard liquor," Chabot says. "And a lot of research says prohibition of alcohol actually worked."

Bottom line, Chabot believes the fight against marijuana is a fight against evil itself. "We tell people, go to a park in San Francisco. The swings your child slides down, the merry-go-rounds made for kids — it's people openly doing drugs. We try to fight back against the San Francisco values."

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Marijuana opponent No. 2 is Steve Sarich, who runs a group funded by the medical marijuana movement, No on I-502 — named for the Washington-state initiative that he sees as a kind of Trojan horse.

"It will be the end of the fourth amendment," Sarich says. "A police officer can file an affidavit that he believes you're stoned, and he can take your blood. When our country comes down to when a policeman's signed statement can get your blood tested, the fourth amendment is dead."

Sarich is basically worried about per se laws — Latin for "in itself." If you have a 0.08 blood alcohol level, you are considered impaired per se. Because California voters who turned down Proposition 19 last year told pollsters they were worried about impaired pot smokers on the road, Washington legalizers did a lot of research to come up with a reasonable per se level for pot. Sarich doesn't think police will use this in a reasonable way to actually stop impaired drivers.

"It's the new prohibition," he continues. "It's a brilliantly devious scheme. THC stays in your blood system for 30 days. The limit in the new law is over 5 milligrams. I wake up with four to five times that quote-unquote impairment level every day. They're estimating that over 10,000 people will be arrested and charged with per se DUID in the state of Washington in the first year. The state wants $2 million to retrain all their police officers to be DRE — drug recognition experts. If they say you look stoned, that will be prima facie evidence for probable cause — just him saying you look stoned!"

Are we a touch paranoid, perhaps? Sarich denies it: "Your tail light's out, I don't like the tint of your windows, you're driving while black. Cops' favorite thing to say is 'I smell pot.' And he might be correct. But is the guy impaired? I'm four times the legal limit right now and I'm not impaired — I hope I don't sound impaired."

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Sarich doesn't think the state law will have any effect on federal law. "I call this the unicorn fairy-dust theory — if they legalize it, the Feds will leave us alone and every 13-year-old girl will get her own unicorn and fairy dust."

His arguments, though, all have giant holes in them. Cops can already stop drivers they consider impaired, they already use the broken-tail-light premise, and the medical-marijuana clinics he supports are also illegal under federal law. It's very difficult to see how making marijuana legal will hurt marijuana smokers — and hard not to suspect that he's really just trying to protect the medical-marijuana business from competition.

"You're asking how am I vested in this," Sarich says. "I'm only vested to protect the rights of patients. You'll never see me involved in legalization. This will wipe out medical cannabis in the state of Washington."

To Norm Stamper, who fought on the front lines of the drug war as a policeman in San Diego before moving to the chief's job in Seattle, Chabot and Sarich's objections range from thin to dishonest.

"We have spent many billions of dollars enforcing marijuana prohibition to essentially no avail," says Stamper. "All it does is increase crime. There are 60,000 people dead in Mexico as a result of the drug war in the last five years, 50 to 70 percent of the cartels' profits are derived from marijuana, and it is a completely unregulated business — the cartels decide who they're going to sell it to and what price, and they don't give a damn if you're 15 years old."

Stamper heaps scorn on Chabot's medical alarms of what marijuana has "been linked" to, exactly."We know marijuana is safer than alcohol and healthier than alcohol — I highly recommend the book, Why Are We Driving People to Drink, which has all the latest peer-reviewed studies. Marijuana is safer, period."

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Of course, he adds, everyone on the I-502 campaign "to an individual" agree that children should not be smoking pot. That's another argument for legalization. "I really do believe in my heart of hearts that we really will reduce access," Stamper says. "Regulation works. Kids know it's easier to score marijuana than peach brandy at a liquor store. Also, there's very good reason to believe that, since the initiative will generate up to half a billion dollars a year in tax revenues and a huge percentage of that is being earmarked for prevention and treatment, we will see an increase in the number of people who come forward and say, 'I have a problem with marijuana' — because they're no longer criminals but people who are experiencing a medical problem. So, paradoxically, there's a good reason to believe that usage will go down rather than up."

Stamper also dismisses Chabot's argument that legalization would send a society-approves-of-pot message to kids. "It's important to be connected to what's real, and what's real is that kids have free access to marijuana today. I suspect the Concerned Parents and other anti- groups really don't realize how easy it is to get. There's a very well-done pamphlet by the I-502 campaign called 'What About The Kids,' written by two physicians have done exhaustive studies. They'e very strong supporters of Initiative 502, along with many, many in the law-enforcement community, two past United States attorneys, a special agent in charge of the FBI office, judges, police officers, and so forth, because they think it will be better for our children to embrace a regulatory as opposed to a prohibition model. If we want to support criminal sanctions to people who provide marijuana to children, we have to legalize it. You can't regulate something that's unlawful."

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What we need, Stamper says, are informational programs "that don't lie to these kids and insult them" — like Chabot's notion of marijuana as a gateway drug, for example. "We can safely say that 100 million Americans have tried at least once, including the last three presidents," Stamper continues, "and a large percentage of those 100 million Americans have found out that it is not a gateway drug."

Ditto Chabot's claim that people are losing student loans or being kicked out of public housing. "Chabot is just plain wrong. Let's remember this war has gone on for over 40 years now. Many people over that time have had their lives devastated for a simple marijuana arrest. Any police officer can tell you that. And if you're arrested for a single marijuana joint in public housing, you are automatically ejected from public housing."

He's no more sympathetic to the gang-bangers-plea-bargaining-to-possession argument. "It is true that there are may people in jail or prison who have had their sentences bargained using marijuana possession as a chip in the bargaining process," Stamper admits. "I'm convinced that one of the reasons some police officers oppose legalization is they like the leverage it gives them — in New York City alone, you get 50,000 arrests a year for simple possession, and those are physical-custody arrests. And these are young people, overwhelmingly black or brown."

What about Chabot's superweed argument, that pot now is stronger than ever before? "The answer is, they smoke less of it. It's as simple as that. If you're looking at 150-proof alcohol versus 5.0 alcohol, presumably you're going to drink less — unless you really are an addict, and that suggests a need for medical treatment, not putting somebody behind bars."

And Chabot's claim that there is no way to test THC?

This one leaves Stamper baffled. "I don't know what he's talking about. Years ago, before I left the San Diego Police Department, I drove to a lab to pee in a bottle for my mandatory drug test. Even then, we were able with urine and certainly with blood to detect trace amounts of THC — heck, if you had a poppy bagel, opioids would supposedly show up."

Let's turn to Sarich then. Is there any validity to this argument about per se laws and the problem of measuring THC levels in drivers?

"The per se is set at 0.05 of active THC. He's talking about trace amounts of non-active THC, cannabinoids that can be in the system for several weeks. But what will be tested for is only active THC, and that leaves the system at same rate as alcohol. So if you make the responsible decision, you give the keys to someone else or you don't get behind the wheel, you're fine."

Happy responsible decision-making, America.

(This post has been updated to reflect Paul Chabot's current profession. He is not a member of Congress, though he did once run for state assembly in California and lose.)

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